Newest Entry: The Tale of the Tape
FBI Agent Robert Fuller, the first witness in Omar Khadr’s hearing who began his testimony on Wednesday, finally concluded it on Friday. Fuller is one of the FBI agents who interrogated Khadr in Bagram before he was brought to Guantanamo Bay in October of 2002.
During his testimony the prosecution played the video of Omar Khadr allegedly making a bomb and conspiring with other men to plant IEDs along a route where American military convoys traveled. After the video, the FBI agent was asked about Khadr’s reaction back in 2002 when shown the video during interrogations. He said when questioned about the contents of the video, Khadr identified himself as well as other men in the vide and remarked that the tape made him “proud to be a soldier.”
Parts of the controversial video were leaked and shown by CBS News’ 60 Minutes in 2007 but this was the first time that some of the journalists covering Khadr’s hearing at GTMO had seen the whole video. Other journalists who were here in January of 2009 had seen the video in its entirety before as well as testimony from Fuller.
The approximately 25-minute video is striking for how little Khadr is seen in it. There are about three shots of him sprinkled throughout the tape. One shot of Khadr has him handling materials that could be parts of an IED. Another shot is the semi-famous nightvision shot where you see him smiling into the camera before it cuts to a man appearing to bury an IED and the third one is a daytime shot where he is fanning himself and talking about how hot it is in Afghanistan, according to the subtitles.
Other parts of the video are older men working with possible IED materials, men relaxing in a home and shots of rain falling outside. The video has multiple edits and it’s hard to determine chronology from it. It’s amateurish in that the shooter is clearly playing with the settings, going from color to sepia-toned to pixalating the image. The idea of playing with the camera would be almost humorous if it didn’t appear as though they were burying IED’s with the intention to blow up US troop convoys.
This video is really at the center of many of the charges against Omar Khadr. While it doesn’t prove the charge of murder it speaks directly to the charges of conspiracy, spying and material support for terrorism. However, when shown in its entirety it also speaks to Khadr’s youth. He is the only teenager in the video. He’s laughing and smiling and looks like a kid.
Admittedly, the best outcome for the defense is to have the video ruled inadmissible because of the situation surrounding how it was found. But unlike when just parts of the video are aired, the whole video feels like a gray-area instead of the black and white of terrorist or not terrorist.
